548 COMPOSITION AND PROPERTIES OF BUTTER 



taining only very minute traces of sodium chloride as a part of 

 its mineral content. Being added to the butter, the amount of 

 salt which butter may contain is controlled exclusively by the 

 buttermaker. 



The great bulk of all butter manufactured in the United 

 States is salted butter, and most of the foreign butter intended 

 for export trade is also salted butter. 



Salted butter contains from about 1 to 5 per cent of salt. 

 Most of the salted butter on the market averages from about 

 2.5 to 4.0 per, cent salt, and the great bulk contains between 3 

 and 3.5 per cent salt. 



For the best interests of the butter industry, excessive salt- 

 ing should be avoided and the per cent salt should be held 

 down to below 4 per cent. 



The consumer's objection to excessively salted butter is 

 clearly expressed by the San Francisco Wholesale Dairy Produce 

 which issued a ruling that after February, 1, 1916, the salt con- 

 tent of all butter coming into San Francisco shall be three per 

 cent. They further state that practically all the butter that had 

 been coming into San Francisco recently (prior to February 1, 

 1916) contained a much higher per cent of salt and that one of 

 the chief complaints on all butter was that butter contained too 

 much salt. See also Chapter XI on Salting. 



The Lactose, C 12 H 22 O lt + H 2 O.~ Normal butter contains 

 from about .20 to .45 per cent of lactose, or milk sugar. The 

 lactose is the sugar of milk which is present in solution in the 

 milk, cream and buttermilk, and a portion of which the butter- 

 granules, in their process of forming, pick up and lock up. The 

 per cent lactose in butter obviously varies somewhat according 

 to the extent of washing and removal of buttermilk. The more 

 thorough the. washing, the less lactose the butter will contain. 



In instances where skimmilk powder is added to the 

 butter in the churn, such as is done in some creameries for the 

 purpose of incorporating extraneous curd in the butter, the lac- 

 tose content of the butter also increases. In experiments with 

 skimmilk powder, conducted by Hunziker and Hosman, 1 butter 

 contained as high as 1.26 per cent lactose. 



1 Hunziker and Hosman A Study of the Composition of Butter. Blue 

 Valley. Research Laboratory, 1917. 



